Wonderland Creek Part 22

"Thanks, Allie." She released my hand to climb off the rock, and we began walking slowly back to the cabin. "Miss Ida the midwife came up a few times to check on us. She says Feather is fine and nothing's wrong with her; she's just got the colic."

"Did Miss Ida say what to do about it?"

"She said to try rubbing her back, but that don't help. Ida's gonna ask Miss Lillie to make a potion for her."

"Good. I can bring it with me the next time I come."

"Miss Ida thinks I got the baby blues. She says they'll go away soon."

I decided to change the subject and help June Ann get her mind off the baby for a little while. Maybe her tears would stop, too. "How did you like the last book I brought you?"

"I ain't finished with it yet, but it's pretty good so far. I wish I could read when I'm up late at night with Feather, but we ain't got money for lamp oil."

I made a mental note to bring June Ann some lamp oil, too. Heaven knows I wasn't using any of it to read at night. After hauling firewood, caring for the animals, cooking breakfast and dinner every day, and rinsing out my clothes in the kitchen sink, I didn't feel like reading at night. I climbed into bed at the end of each day and slept like a dead woman, paying little attention to the bat flying all around my room.

June Ann and I talked about books for a bit, and I warned her about the wildcat roaming the woods. "Yeah, I smelled it a couple of times, so I been locking all the animals up at night. This dog of mine barks loud enough to wake the dead. He'll keep a whole clan of cats away."

On the way back to the library, I stopped to see Mack. I had to climb off Belle and sit on his porch to wait for him, but he finally crept out of the underbrush like a Cherokee sneaking up on a pioneer. I was still so jittery from the gunshots, and the screaming baby, and news of a wildcat roaming loose, that I jumped a mile when Mack said h.e.l.lo.

"Oh! Don't startle me like that!" I snapped.

"I'm fine. How are you?" he snapped back. He sat beside me on the steps, waiting until we both calmed down.

"I stopped by to tell you that I went to the mine office yesterday. I had to break a window to get in, and after all that trouble, the telephone was dead."

"Did you check the files for me?"

"The drawer I opened was stuffed full of papers."

"Perfect!"

"What are you planning, Mack?"

He shook his head, warning me not to ask.

"Well, while I was in there snooping around for you, the sheriff showed up."

Mack didn't seem surprised. "What did you tell him?"

"The truth. That I needed to use the telephone. He was kind enough to drive me to his office, but he asked a lot of questions while he had me in his car."

"What kind of questions?"

"Some were about you-how long I had known you, that sort of thing. He also asked about Miss Lillie. I didn't want to say too much, but I didn't want to sound like I was hiding anything, either. He drove me into town and let me call home from there."

"Hmm. That's a problem."

My temper flared again. "Why is it a problem that I called home? My parents have a right to know that I'm okay, even if I am staying with a bunch of liars and snoops and . . . and . . . who knows what else?"

He rested his hand on my arm to calm me. "I'm glad you called home, Alice. It isn't that. But the sheriff must have someone watching the mine if he showed up so quickly. That's the problem."

"You don't think it was a coincidence? I didn't see anyone following me along the way."

"I don't believe in coincidences where he's concerned. If he has spies watching the mine, then it's going to be a problem for me to get back in there."

"I really don't want to know what you're planning." Which was just as well because Mack didn't seem inclined to tell me. "You should also know that Cora's brother Clint has been asking me a lot of questions, too-where I'm from, what I'm doing here. When I told him I was from a town near Chicago, he got very suspicious and said that Chicago is where all the gangsters lived."

Mack laughed out loud.

"I'm glad you think it's funny. Will you be laughing when Clint takes a potshot at me, too?"

"I'm sorry." He ran his hand across his face as if to smooth away his smile. "But it's hilarious that Clint would think you're a gangster. Look at you! You're like one of those dainty porcelain dolls from Germany, with your curly blond hair and peachy skin. I don't know how Clint or the sheriff or anyone else can believe you're up to no good."

Was Mack flirting with me or making fun of me? I couldn't decide, but it reminded me of another question that I needed to ask. "Listen, tell me what you know about Ike Arnett."

"Ike? He's like a younger brother to me. Why?"

"Well, your 'younger brother' was up in your bedroom when I got home yesterday, digging around for your hunting jacket. It seemed as though he'd been up there for quite a while. He said he wanted something to remember you by. Lillie let him take it."

"That was my favorite coat. I guess it serves me right for dying."

"He also invited me to go to with him on Sat.u.r.day to hear him play the fiddle with his band."

Mack rose to his feet to stroke Belle's shoulder and muzzle. I couldn't see his face when he asked, "So are you going?"

"If you think it's all right, yes. You seem to know the character of everybody in Acorn better than I do."

"Ike's fine. He could go a long way with his fiddling if he could catch a break. I was trying to help him get to Nashville . . . before I died, that is."

"Your death has been inconvenient for a lot of people, including me."

"Go with him, Alice. You'll have fun."

As soon as I got home, I went searching for Lillie. I wanted to ask her about making the potion for June Ann's baby. I found her upstairs in bed. She looked so pale and worn-out that it worried me. "Are you okay?"

"Just weary, honey. How was your day?" I told her about June Ann and baby Feather. "Yes, Ida came by asking about medicine for the colic. If you got time tomorrow, you can help me make some. It ain't hard, but I don't think I can do it by myself."

"Sure, I'll be glad to help. I'm worried about June Ann more than the baby. It seems like she cries as much as Feather does."

"Sounds like the baby blues. Ida said June Ann might have a case of them."

"Is there anything that might help her, too? Besides someone to talk to?"

"We can fix some tonic that might help her."

"n.o.body in this stupid town will visit her because of the feud. I don't suppose you have a remedy for that, do you?"

"Only Jesus can fix that mess."

The next morning, Lillie felt strong enough to get out of bed again. I was relieved. After breakfast she got out her "picking basket," and I helped her walk outside so she could show me her herb garden. "This is where I grow things to make my medicines." She pointed to an overgrown patch of sprawling plants, bordered with stones. "I ain't had the strength to pull all them weeds this spring, but there's some good plants growing in there. If I tell you what I need, think you can pick them for me?"

"Sure." I looked around for snakes first, since I had seen one slithering through the gra.s.s near the chicken coop the other day. My hesitation seemed to puzzle Lillie.

"Why you looking all around like that? Something gonna jump out and bite you?"

"I saw a snake in the gra.s.s over there," I said, shivering as I pointed.

"That's just a garter snake, honey. He won't hurt you."

"How do you know what kind of snake I saw?"

"Because I seen a whole lot of them here in my yard."

A whole lot? Her a.s.surances failed to comfort me. I poked at the tall weeds with a stick, just to be sure, then knelt down on the damp gra.s.s with Lillie's basket. Up close, I could see borders of stones around each smaller section of plants, as well as around the entire perimeter. The garden must have been very pretty at one time.

"That there is catnip." Lillie pointed with the tip of her cane. "We need a few leaves of that. Next to it is peppermint. Pick a few leaves and smell them."

The fragrant aroma made my mouth water. "Mmm. Like mint candy."

"If I were stronger, I'd take you into the woods to pick wild ginger and ginseng-but I ain't young anymore. We'll have to make do with dried roots for now. I still got some dried chickweed and yarrow, too, but fresh is always better."

"Maybe Mack can show me where to find what you need. He found some wild mushrooms up there in the woods."

"Um. Maybe. He has his hands full right now." She showed me a few more things to pick and then explained which plants were good and which were the weeds. "Them weeds should all be pulled up or they'll choke out the good plants. Weeds are just like hatred and greed, you know. If you ain't careful, they'll choke all the love and compa.s.sion out of a person."

"I'll come back and weed the garden for you, if I have time," I promised.

Before we went inside, Lillie pointed to a large square of earth dotted with dead leaves and more sprouting weeds. "That's supposed to be our vegetable garden, but Mack never did get around to it before he got shot. Guess we'll have to plant it ourselves if we want to keep eating."

My shoulders sagged beneath the weight of imaginary shovels and clumps of earth. I had seen Wayne Larkin and the Howard and Sawyer families plowing and planting and sweating to carve out their gardens and it had looked like backbreaking work to me. What had I gotten myself into by agreeing to stay?

When we'd picked enough herbs, I helped Lillie hobble inside again to mix up the brew in her black iron cauldron. I felt like one of the witches in Macbeth-"Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble"-as I stirred the finished concoction on the kitchen stove. While it cooled, Lillie gave me a mortar and pestle and instructed me to crush a handful of dried seed pods to extract the reddish-purple liquid from them.

"That juice is for June Ann," Lillie told me. "Some folks call that plant 'chase-devil' because it helps chase the sad spirits away. Others call it St. John's Wort because you're supposed to pick it on June twenty-fourth-St. John's Day. I'm just about out of it, but maybe we can pick some more this June if I'm up to it."

I couldn't imagine Miss Lillie ever being hearty enough to roam through the woods again, the way she once had. The thought made me very sad.

We finished preparing both elixirs, and I was helping Lillie tidy up her workroom when I came upon a pile of neatly typed pages. "What's all this?" I asked, sifting through them.

"Something Mack and me was working on."

"They look like recipes."

"They are. He was helping me type up all my remedies, like the ones we made today. He said I need to pa.s.s on all the things I know about healing people. Him and me was gonna write a big book full of folk medicine and such. He even had some fancy college professor interested in it. But then Mack got shot. I been too weary to work on it by myself."

I paged through the stack of papers. Lillie was one hundred years old. When she died, all of this valuable knowledge would be lost. "I'll help you," I said. "I know how to type. I'll be glad to type these for you if you want me to."

She smiled her broad gap-toothed grin. "Honey, you don't know what a relief that would be to me."

After lunch, Lillie lay down to take a nap. I would have loved a nap, too, but I put on my oldest clothes and went outside to survey the garden patch. I knew a tiny bit about gardens, because my parents had started one behind our parsonage. For the past two summers they had grown vegetables to give away to the poor people in Blue Island, and to make soup for the hoboes who stopped by our house for something to eat as if we were running a restaurant. But now, if I wanted to eat, I would have to become a gardener along with everything else.

I knew that the first thing I had to do was turn over the soil and uproot the weeds to get the ground ready to plant. I found a spade in the shed. Like everything else in Acorn, the work would have to be done the old-fashioned way. I had labored for twenty minutes or so, breaking up a section about four feet square-and had collected a nice set of blisters on my hands-when I heard a man's voice behind me. "Need help?"

Ike Arnett strode across the yard toward me. I leaned against the shovel with a sigh. "Yes, I think I do. This work is harder than I thought it would be."

"Didn't I tell you to just ask me if you needed help? Stand still a minute-you got some dirt on your face." He swiped his thumb across my cheek. "There. Got it."

"Yes, you did say you would help, and it's very kind of you. But in this case, it seems like it would be asking a lot."

"I ain't gonna do it with a spade, that's for sure. But I'll be glad to plow it up for you. Mack had a push plow that he used every year." Ike bounced over to the shed as if he had coil springs in his shoes. He came back with a little hand plow like the one my father used, and a wide-toothed rake. He handed the rake to me. "Here. You can make it all nice and smooth after I plow it up."

"Thank you. I can't tell you how relieved I am to have help. The truth is, I don't know much about gardens. But I do know that if I don't plant one, Miss Lillie and I won't have anything to eat."

"Well, lucky for you, I've been planting gardens since I was old enough to stand up in one."

We worked side by side for the rest of the afternoon, talking and laughing about all kinds of things. Ike showed me an earthworm he'd plowed up and explained why worms were good for the garden. He knew the names of all the birds singing in the treetops along the creek, and he whistled in imitation of each one of them. He was one of the most cheerful people I had ever met, which made me realize how gloomy Gordon had always been. His family's funeral business may have been partially to blame, but Ike was as lighthearted and happy as the fiddle music he played.

Together we got the garden plowed and raked and ready to plant, but my body ached in a thousand places by suppertime. "Ask Miss Lillie to show you where her seed potatoes are," he said as we stood back to survey our work. "We can get them planted next week. She probably has some other seeds saved up, too. Alma has a bunch of tomato and pepper seedlings she started. I'll bet she'll trade you for some eggs."

"Should we plant corn? It seems like everybody on my book route was planting corn."

He lifted his hand to his mouth, and I could see that he was hiding a smile. "We could . . ." he said slowly. "But the corn they're planting ain't for eating. It's for making moonshine." He laughed, and I couldn't help laughing with him.

By quitting time, we had made a solid start on the garden. And I had made a good friend. "See you tomorrow at two?" he asked after putting our tools back in the shed.

"I'm looking forward to it. And thanks again for all your help."

I went inside with a tired smile on my face and began pumping water for my wonderful, glorious, long-overdue bath.

On Sat.u.r.day afternoon I was dressing for my date with Ike Arnett when I heard a terrible roar out in front of the library. It sounded as if a dragon had crawled out of the woods and was threatening to devour the entire town. I ran to the front window in Lillie's workroom and peered out. Ike had arrived in a rickety, rusty, flatbed pickup truck. It lacked a m.u.f.fler, and every time he pumped the gas pedal to rev the engine, the vehicle quaked and roared. I couldn't determine the truck's original color beneath all the rust, nor could I tell the model, but it looked old enough to be the first truck off Henry Ford's a.s.sembly line thirty years ago.

He couldn't possibly expect me to ride in that wreck, could he? Maybe I should plead illness. But that hardly seemed fair after all the hard work Ike had done in Lillie's garden yesterday. I hurried into my bedroom to put on my stockings and shoes, wondering what I had gotten myself into.

"Woo-ee! Don't you look beautiful!" Ike said as I descended the library stairs.

"Thank you. You look pretty nice yourself." His handsome face was scrubbed and clean-shaven, his straw-colored hair slicked back with pomade. He wore a neatly pressed white shirt, string tie, and clean blue jeans. Ike offered me his arm as we walked out to his truck.

The vehicle looked even worse up close, the fenders missing, the front b.u.mper attached to the frame with baling wire. Ike walked me around to the pa.s.senger side and opened the door for me, taking my hand to help me up onto the seat. It lacked upholstery and padding, and was composed of pillows covered with a patchwork quilt like the one on Lillie's bed. I thought I saw a couple of springs poking between the pillows and wished I hadn't worn my good stockings.

"It ain't too pretty, but it'll get us there," Ike said. I wasn't so sure. Even if it did make it up the mountain and out of this hollow, I would be stone-deaf by the time we arrived. There was no gla.s.s in the window between the cab and the truck bed.

Ike ran around the truck and jumped in, restarting the engine with a roar. The vehicle coughed and choked as if it had swallowed a mule on the way here and the animal was stuck in its throat.

"I'm sorry it's running so rough," Ike shouted above the racket. "We don't drive it very often because we can't afford the gasoline unless I get a fiddling job." It would be impossible to talk while we drove, so I sat back to enjoy the scenery. We rode past the abandoned mine and through the town where the sheriff's office was, then continued on to a smaller town a few miles away from it.

The event turned out to be a wedding, held at a pretty little church nestled in a hollow. Ike and the pianist played "Here Comes the Bride" as she walked down the aisle. Afterward, the guests brought out ca.s.serole dishes and spread them on a table in the churchyard. It was a beautiful afternoon, and tables and chairs had been set up in the gra.s.s. The mountains made a stunning backdrop all around us.

Ike joined the other musicians who were tuning their instruments on a newly built stage, set up outside on the lawn. It smelled gloriously of fresh lumber. "How old do you think the bride and groom are?" I asked as he plucked a few strings. "They look like teenagers."